Development of a data-acquisition program for an integrated temperature measurement system

Abstract

Integrated temperature equipment system using advanced testing method with high accuracy has been well developed and applied in industries. However, costs of such a system are very high for agricultural applications. The objective of this paper is to develop a computer program based on virtual instrumentation (VI) method for thermal measurement system to conduct measurements of temperatures. A data acquisition program is developed with LabVIEW application software from National Instruments based on the HP 3497A. This computer program can automatically acquire reference temperatures through 80 channels simultaneously. The system integrated sensing, computing, and measuring technologies. The software designed by VI has capabilities of signal noise reduction and elimination, process displays, and storage of available data. The hardware of the system consists of a HP data acquisition board 3497A and a set of thermocouple sensors. The data boards acquire and convert analog signals in different channels simultaneously. The acquired signals are sent to the computer and processed automatically by the software through GPIB and Com. A program in VI that can measure temperatures and compensate the thermocouple measurement is developed. The test data show that results from the hardware compensated and the software compensated integrated temperature measurement system (ITMS) are close that of the reference measurement system.